View full sizePortland Winterhawks right winger Ty Rattie (left) and defenseman Troy Rutkowski celebrate Rattie's goal against the London Knights during the third period Friday.Associated Press

SASKATOON, Saskatchewan — It’s been 15 long years, but the Portland Winterhawks are headed back to the championship game of the Memorial Cup.

Ty Rattie scored with 11:28 left in the third period to break a tie and lift the Hawks to a tense 2-1 semifinal victory over the London Knights. It was the second win in five days over London for the Hawks (3-1), who beat the Knights 6-3 in the round robin on Monday.

Portland will face Halifax in Sunday’s winner-take-all final, and the Hawks hope to exact revenge for a 7-4 loss to the Mooseheads to open the tournament.

That game seems like a lifetime ago for Portland goaltender Mac Carruth, who admits he had a poor performance against Halifax but responded with three straight outstanding efforts to push the Hawks to the brink of a title.

“He was great tonight,” Hawks acting head coach Travis Green said of Carruth, who stopped 34 of 35 shots against a Knights team that beat Saskatoon 6-1 in Thursday’s tiebreaker to reach the semifinal. “I thought it was his best game of the tournament, and just a great performance by a guy we’ve leaned on for a long time now.”

Carruth faced heavy fire late in the game, and came up with huge saves on London stars Max Domi and Olli Maata in the frantic final 90 seconds. Afterward, he deflected credit toward the guys in front of him.

“(London) brought a lot of pressure late but our guys did great,” said Carruth. “They blocked shots, took sticks away and let me see the puck.”

Rattie had a chance to seal the game with an empty-net goal, but he shot the puck into the legs of London defenseman Scott Harrington, setting up a mad scramble in front of Carruth as the final seconds ticked off.

“I talked to Ty and he mentioned he wanted to keep the TV ratings high so he just kept it at 2-1 instead of putting it into the empty net,” Green said facetiously.

Rattie, who called the end of the game “hectic,” said he wasn’t quite aware of how much time was left when he attempted the shot. After the missed opportunity, the Knights responded with a 3-on-2 that could’ve spelled disaster for the Hawks if not for another crucial stop by Carruth.

Luckly, Rattie can hang his hat on the game-winner, a blistering wrist shot from about 25 feet away into the top corner. The goal was his fifth of the tournament, which leads all players.

“I know he’s a smaller goalie so I tried to get it up high on him,” Rattie said.

Nicolas Petan set up both Portland goals, giving him a tournament-high six assists in four games.

“This was a gritty, gutty, greasy win, so everyone’s happy,” said Petan.

The Hawks generated little offense in the first half of the game due to London’s trapping style that makes it difficult to create high-quality scoring chances.

“This was a tough game tonight,” said Green. “I thought London played extremely well for playing four games in five nights.”

The game remained scoreless until Domi’s goal on the Knights’ only power play of the game gave them a 1-0 lead with 7:17 left in the second period. Only briefly deflated, the Hawks rebounded just over two minutes later when Tyler Wotherspoon’s weak floater from the blue line took a deflection past Patterson and into the net.

“After they scored I thought our guys found another gear and got hungrier, and we wore them down a bit the last “few” minutes of the second period,” said Green.

The Knights pushed back in the third period, but couldn’t match Rattie’s brilliant strike.

“They made a great shot and that ended up being the difference,” said Knights coach Dale Hunter. “Our character came out at the end, and I can’t say enough about our players. But their goalie played well and he made the big saves at the end of the game.”

Perhaps more than any other Winterhawk, Carruth is looking forward to a rematch against Halifax, which is the only team to score seven goals on him this season.

“We’ve been looking forward to it all week,” he said. “Everyone knows I didn’t have my best game that night and I think that one rests all on my shoulders.”

The Hawks have played in two previous Memorial Cup finals, winning in 1983 and 1998. A win Sunday would make it three championships, each 15 years apart.

“It’s a dream come true,” said Rattie. “We’ve had a lot of ups and downs this year on the ice and off the ice. To be here now and see the boys get rewarded and play on such a big stage is awesome.

“We aren’t done yet. We’re doing this for Portland, for (suspended head coach and general manger) Mike Johnston and everything that happened this year.”